“Sitting here today are some of the talented young people who will make an incredible mark on the future of South Africa,” declared then South African Ambassador to Israel, Johann Marx at the graduation ceremony on Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael in June 2001.
Sponsored by South Africa Mizrachi, HEATID offered four-week intense leadership and entrepreneurship courses in Israel for South Africans. The graduates in that course included representatives from Absa Bank, Dimension, ESKOM, the Investec banking group, Price Waterhouse Coopers and Otis Elevators.
The Ambassador posed a question of how a “small country with few mineral resources could transform itself over 50 years from a rural backwater into a technological behemoth? What is the secret behind this success? How can South Africans learn from the Israel experience?”
The answer was identified in one word. “Education” by the former Israeli Ambassador to South Korea and a senior officer in Mashav, Yaron Arazi. “Gold is no longer the most precious commodity – today it is know-how.”
Mashav is Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, involved in programmes throughout the developing world.
Sender Lees, then President of Mizrachi South Africa, outlined the emphasis of the HEATID courses: “Women’s entrepreneurship, information technology (IT), taking banking to the people, drawing communities into the economic mainstream and computer literacy.”
“So far 160 people have passed through this programme. The key to the future is summed up in our motto – “Growth through expertise”.
Ambassador Marx observed that “while most South African expatriates are distant physically from the native homeland, they are not emotionally. The presence here today of so many of you, demonstrates the concern of the South African community in Israel for the wellbeing and welfare of the South Africa of the future.”
